Is there any way to make an HR24-200 faster?

[cypherstream]

I have an HR44 and HR24. Obviously the 44 is fairly responsive. However the 24 has gotten very slow over the years. I replaced the hard drive twice, and infact now it has a laptop size drive in it because its all I had laying around that would fit.

Using it is so frustrating. A channel change is a good 10 seconds and I'm not using native. Scrolling through the guide is riddled with delays. Sometimes paging through it gets stuck and you have to wait for the blue highlighted cell to appear on the top channel before you can move again.

I've read that using an RF remote can fix some of the issues. However my Logitech Harmony 650 does not do RF, and I need it for this location to turn the TV and AVR on (or off) to the correct inputs and in sync.

I was thinking, with as cheap as SSD's have become, and I don't really need a ton of storage (most stuff is on our HR44), do you think if I put in an SSD the speed will improve greatly?

What is faster, a client attached to an HR44 or an HR24 with an SSD installed?

Thanks for your input.

 

[dishrich]

The HDD is NOT the problem w/the HR24...it's all the bloatware that D* has continued to shove into ALL their receivers, who's CPU's NEVER intended to run such intensive programs. As you already mentioned, the HR44 IS faster with the SAME guide & other features that you also find in your HR24 & all other HR receivers...hence the diff on speed. (us folks w/DISH are going thru the very same thing with their CUI they shoved into ALL Ho/Jo receivers a couple months ago, which has rendered anything below an H3 into a slow/hot-ass MESS!!!)

As far as using an RF remote, in my experience the performance is actually worse than IR...but again, it's NOT the root cause of the slowness, as I just explained.
Also, I do NOT believe you're going to even be able to use an SSD in these DVR's; again, they were NOT made to accommodate such drives.
As far as using a client (mini), do keep in mind it will steal one of the tuners in the HR44 for live TV...speedwise, from what I've seen at client's homes, it's kind of a toss-up.
Personally, if it's between the two, I would stick with the separate DVR...again, why loose 2 tuners for the SAME $7/month fee???

 

[Jimbo]

What I would consider doing is calling D* and have them replace the HR24, however, you'd have to put the original HD back in it and you would lose the recordings as well.

Let them deal with it, tell them you woke up, turned it on and it wont work.
Maybe they will drop ship you one ....

I too would rather have a different HR24 than another client.

 

[vazhog]

if you think it's slow now -just wait for the new gui to go national -that may end the 2 tuner dvr offer from D*

 

[I WANT MORE]

The HR 24s have turned in to a huge pile of dog crap.
Mine have not had an update since 4/19.
I wish D* would allow more than one Genie per account.

 

[HoTat2]

The HDD is NOT the problem w/the HR24...it's all the bloatware that D* has continued to shove into ALL their receivers, who's CPU's NEVER intended to run such intensive programs. As you already mentioned, the HR44 IS faster with the SAME guide & other features that you also find in your HR24 & all other HR receivers...hence the diff on speed. (us folks w/DISH are going thru the very same thing with their CUI they shoved into ALL Ho/Jo receivers a couple months ago, which has rendered anything below an H3 into a slow/hot-ass MESS!!!)

As far as using an RF remote, in my experience the performance is actually worse than IR...but again, it's NOT the root cause of the slowness, as I just explained.
Also, I do NOT believe you're going to even be able to use an SSD in these DVR's; again, they were NOT made to accommodate such drives.
As far as using a client (mini), do keep in mind it will steal one of the tuners in the HR44 for live TV...speedwise, from what I've seen at client's homes, it's kind of a toss-up.
Personally, if it's between the two, I would stick with the separate DVR...again, why loose 2 tuners for the SAME $7/month fee???

Yeah ...

In fact according to Stuart's sources at DIRECTV, they really only want the H25, H44 Genie Lite, HR44/54 Genie, and HS17 Genie 2, and clients nowadays.

Everything else older is pretty much going to left to "wither on the vine" so to speak.

The OP can try a "CLEARMYBOX" from the search menu to speed up things. But don't expect much improvement. Particularly as the number of recordings on the HR24 increase.

 

[Claude Greiner]

The HR 24s have turned in to a huge pile of dog crap.
Mine have not had an update since 4/19.
I wish D* would allow more than one Genie per account.

I agree.

I Dswm30 will support 5 Genies.

I don't get it. If a customer wants to spend the money why not allow the latest and greatest?

I can put as many TiVo Bolts on my comcast account and there is no issue

 

[Claude Greiner]

What did you do to upgrade the hard drive?

Does the size of the new drive increase capacity ?

 

[cypherstream]

Ok the original 500gb hard drive died. I had another Seagate low profile hard drive that fit the HR24-200's cage. I was able to use a linux based utility to do a 1:1 copy from the old drive (after a little tap on it to get the drive heads out of park when it booted up in a PC). I ran on the cloned drive for some time, but it was a borrowed hard drive from a PC, so it eventually died. The only thing I had around was an early generation 64GB mSATA SSD drive and SATA adapter from an older laptop. I used this for a little bit of time just so the HR24 could watch live TV. After it formatted 64GB drive, it only really had enough space for its buffer, so it couldn't record.

I ended up coming across a 250GB 2.5" laptop drive from doing computer repair work and someone didn't want it anymore. This is what I have in the HR24 now. It's just sitting in there connected to the sata and power. I don't record much on the HR24, only a few things when the HR44 is out of tuners and already recording 5 things.

Doing computer repair work I have access to good pricing and all components imaginable. Heck my home firewall is on a 128GB SSD running pfSense. That's more for power consumption since its on all the time, rather than performance, but I digress. I don't mind experimenting with something like a 256GB SSD, and if it doesn't work out, sell it, off load it or use it in another project. I'm not looking for vast amounts of storage because the HR44 does 95% of all DVR tasks in the home. I'm really just looking for a set top box that makes watching TV fun again. When it takes just as long to find something to watch via IP service like Netflix, PlutoTV, Youtube, or whatever... it no longer feels like its worth over $100 a month for TV service.

The HR44 is another story. Yes i know about the CE, but its not coming to the HR34 or lower. I'm not interested in running anything risky or disrupting my wifes experience, so I haven't personally tested the CE yet. Since they don't have it for the HR24, I'll never test it until maybe its almost ready and I grab it a few weeks before national release in the 3-4am EST window when they are doing staged NR roll-outs.

I've read that the clients are slow and DirecTV "ready" TV's are even slower (and seemingly harder to come by anyway). But where would you guage the different clients compared to an HR34, HR24, HR23, HR21 for example?

Is a C31/41 faster or slower than an HR24?
Is a C61k faster or slower than an HR24?
Does it matter what genie is running the server? Is a C61k for example faster when a Genie Air or Genie 2 (whatever they are calling that headless server these days) is used? Is it faster if an HR54 is used over an HR44?

Obviously I've heard horror stories about the HR34. I have to wonder if its more on par with what I'm experiencing with the 24. It would be nice if I could have 2 genie's and run the CE on one of them, but that doesn't seem to be an option.

Thankfully its not a heavily used TV, but when it is, its just frustrating.

 

[lnbchris]

Ok the original 500gb hard drive died. I had another Seagate low profile hard drive that fit the HR24-200's cage. I was able to use a linux based utility to do a 1:1 copy from the old drive (after a little tap on it to get the drive heads out of park when it booted up in a PC). I ran on the cloned drive for some time, but it was a borrowed hard drive from a PC, so it eventually died. The only thing I had around was an early generation 64GB mSATA SSD drive and SATA adapter from an older laptop. I used this for a little bit of time just so the HR24 could watch live TV. After it formatted 64GB drive, it only really had enough space for its buffer, so it couldn't record.

I ended up coming across a 250GB 2.5" laptop drive from doing computer repair work and someone didn't want it anymore. This is what I have in the HR24 now. It's just sitting in there connected to the sata and power. I don't record much on the HR24, only a few things when the HR44 is out of tuners and already recording 5 things.

Doing computer repair work I have access to good pricing and all components imaginable. Heck my home firewall is on a 128GB SSD running pfSense. That's more for power consumption since its on all the time, rather than performance, but I digress. I don't mind experimenting with something like a 256GB SSD, and if it doesn't work out, sell it, off load it or use it in another project. I'm not looking for vast amounts of storage because the HR44 does 95% of all DVR tasks in the home. I'm really just looking for a set top box that makes watching TV fun again. When it takes just as long to find something to watch via IP service like Netflix, PlutoTV, Youtube, or whatever... it no longer feels like its worth over $100 a month for TV service.

The HR44 is another story. Yes i know about the CE, but its not coming to the HR34 or lower. I'm not interested in running anything risky or disrupting my wifes experience, so I haven't personally tested the CE yet. Since they don't have it for the HR24, I'll never test it until maybe its almost ready and I grab it a few weeks before national release in the 3-4am EST window when they are doing staged NR roll-outs.

I've read that the clients are slow and DirecTV "ready" TV's are even slower (and seemingly harder to come by anyway). But where would you guage the different clients compared to an HR34, HR24, HR23, HR21 for example?

Is a C31/41 faster or slower than an HR24?
Is a C61k faster or slower than an HR24?
Does it matter what genie is running the server? Is a C61k for example faster when a Genie Air or Genie 2 (whatever they are calling that headless server these days) is used? Is it faster if an HR54 is used over an HR44?

Obviously I've heard horror stories about the HR34. I have to wonder if its more on par with what I'm experiencing with the 24. It would be nice if I could have 2 genie's and run the CE on one of them, but that doesn't seem to be an option.

Thankfully its not a heavily used TV, but when it is, its just frustrating.

Did you use DD in Linux? )